The Sky is Our Laboratory - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

The Sky is Our Laboratory Your Questions first How far away can we get out out in space today? Do you believe we have been to the moon? How big is the Universe? What percent of the total known Universe is our star (Sun)? Could there be anything faster than the speed of light?

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As far as we know, humans have not gone any further than the Moon; about 384,000 km (~243,000 miles) or 1.28 light minutes .

Automatic spacecrafts (robots) have been and are exploring the planets; about 5,900,000,000 km or ~ 5.5 light hours.

Telescopes (which we will discuss today) have reached roughly back to when the Universe was `only’ 1-2 Gyr (1,000,000,000 - 2,000,000,000 yrs) old. Today the Universe is about 13.5 Gyr old. Its size, calculated as the `event horizon’ is 13.5 billions of light years (~225,000 Galaxy’s radii)

Yes, it is very dark in space. Outside the solar system, the next closest star, Proxima Centauri, is about 4.3 ly away. On average in our own Galaxy each star is about 10 ly away from every other star in every direction.

more than headlights, I would advice installing a radar in the spaceship (especially within and around solar systems) to avoid collision with dark bodies.

A galaxy is a body of stars, gas, and dark matter kept together by gravity;

The `cosmos’ is a loose definition to indicate the Universe, or components of it. It comes from Greek, to indicate an harmonious whole, opposed to chaos.

A white dwarf is a dying star, which has terminated its nuclear fuel, and has contracted to roughly the size of the Earth.

This fate is shared by all stars with masses below 8 M(Sun), and they end up with masses below 1.4 M(Sun) [the Chandrasekar limit]. Most WDs have masses around 0.6 M(Sun)

The core of a WD is commonly a mixture of Carbon and Oxygen, and is releasing as light the contraction heat.

When cold (~6,000-8,000 K) they may crystallize into `giant diamonds’ (first confirmed observationally from WD oscillations in 2004).

Pulsars are fast rotating neutron stars, first discovered in 1967. The spinning magnetic field of the star is producing the pulses. Neutron stars form from collapsing stars with masses below 3.2 M(Sun).

Black holes are collapsed stars with M>= 3.2 M(Sun). Their gravitational pull is so large that not even the light can escape! We can only see them when surrounding matter spirals into the hole.

A quasar is a very (super-)massive black hole in the center of a young galaxy, which is accreting large amounts of mass, and emitting large amounts of energy. Quasars are a very active phase of the life of galaxies, found at high redshifts.